The New Neighbor: A Novel

by Leah Stewart

  “What about the baby?”

  She was right—I was leaving out the baby. The baby was hard to imagine. The baby that shouldn’t have existed. “I’ll help you with the baby,” I said.

  “How will I go to work?”

  “Maybe you won’t,” I said. “Maybe I’ll go to work and you’ll stay with the baby.”

  “Like a married couple?”

  “No,” I said. “Like friends.”

  She lay back down on the cot. She put her hands over her eyes. She said, “I don’t know what else to do.”

  That was the tone she took from then on, when we talked about our plans. Weary resignation. I admit I sometimes felt frustrated, sometimes wanted a little more gratitude. It’s not as though there wasn’t any, but it wasn’t what prevailed. She’d given up, I think. To her I wasn’t the one who threw the life preserver. I was the one who wouldn’t let her jump. I wrote to my parents, embellishing my sob story, and my sweet, kind mother wrote back, Of course. Kay’s eyes filled with tears when I showed her the letter. That time she said thank you, or at least that’s how I remember it.

  I don’t know quite how long we treaded water. The war was slowing, and so we weren’t busy, and it wasn’t hard to cover for Kay. Then the Sixth Cavalry found a concentration camp in Austria, and they sent for our unit to take care of them. You’ve seen pictures, Jennifer, but you’ve never seen a human being like this, in those striped uniforms and nothing but bones. No flesh on them at all, just skin. Oh Lord. The soldiers wouldn’t let us into the buildings—the women, the nurses. They said they found dead ones in bed with live ones. The townspeople said they didn’t know anything about it, but they’d requested that the camp raise the chimney because the smell of burning flesh was bothering them. Bodies and bodies, dumped in a ditch. General Patton made the men of that town bury all those people. I have pictures of that. And our chaplain said a service. Man’s inhumanity to man, let me tell you.

  I have tried not to let these things haunt my dreams. I have tried not to believe that human beings are evil, animals picking each other’s bones.

  After the camp, it began to seem urgent that Kay tell the chief nurse, go ahead and get her discharge. She kept saying she wanted to wait a little longer, but she was starting to fill out, and soon it would be apparent to anyone who looked at her, and more than that, more than that, I just couldn’t bear it. I was responsible for her, and I couldn’t bear it anymore, not after the camp. Later I pasted the pictures from the camp in my scrapbook, with all the other ones I took. Pages and pages of army life: A nurse washes her clothes in an empty barrel. A soldier smokes a cigarette, striking a cocky pose. Pages and pages like that, and then there they are in neat rows: A stack of dead bodies. A man like a stick figure in a striped uniform. I can’t remember putting those pictures in the book, slipping the corners into their little black triangles, lining them up. It frightens me a little to think of the person who did that. The person who documented the horrific and the daily as if they were the same. The person I must have been.

  So one day I said, again, “Kay, you have to tell her.”

  “Not today,” Kay said, her usual demurral, but this time I said, “Yes, today, or I will.” At that she tightened her mouth into a line. Silence. All day I waited for her to crack. I waited and waited. But we went to bed without another word on the subject.

  I couldn’t sleep. No matter how I positioned myself on the cot my body ached. When I finally got up Kay stirred. “Where are you going?” she asked. I pretended not to have heard.

  We were in tents there. The chief nurse had a tent to herself. I knocked on the tent pole, heard a faint, “Wha . . . ?” and stepped inside. She sat up, pushing a tangle of hair out of her face. She was a martinet and we all hated her, but even she looked vulnerable at three in the morning, her cheeks oddly puffy. “What on earth, Riley?” she said. “Are we under attack?”

  “No.” I crouched awkwardly at her feet. It was not too late to change my mind. “I think Kay is pregnant.”

  I watched as she registered this news. “Thank you, Riley,” she said. “You may go.”

  I went back to my tent. I thought Kay was asleep. But then she startled me by speaking. “You told her, didn’t you,” she said, without the question mark.

  “You can’t stay here anymore,” I said. I expected anger from her, but instead in the dark I heard weeping. I rolled away from her, hardening myself. “I’ve arranged everything with my parents,” I said, and I was the one who sounded angry. I’d gone to the camp and she hadn’t. Maybe that was why. “You have a place to go. You’re lucky to get out of here. You’re lucky.”

  I’d been bringing her the syrettes. But I didn’t know she’d been hoarding them. How would I know? There were days she barely spoke to me. What was I supposed to do? Refuse her help when she was in pain? Insist I give her the injections, search her things, treat her like a child, humiliate her? How was I supposed to know? What could I have done to stop her? Tell me, Jennifer. What could I have done?

  You’re lucky was the last thing I said to her. In the morning she was dead.

  Jennifer said, “You told me she lived.” I was startled. She was accusing me.

  “Did I?” I said.

  “When you first brought her up. You said she didn’t die.”

  “All right, let’s say she didn’t,” I said. “Let’s pretend none of this, none of what I’ve told you is true.”

  “Is that what you want? Because I’ll write it down however you want.”

  I’d upset her. I couldn’t get over my surprise. “What happened happened.”

  “What happened is what somebody says happened,” she said. “That’s all history is.”

  I’ve been thinking about that, since she left. So we create the past, do we, Jennifer? Maybe. Maybe. But have you really convinced yourself it’s quite that simple? I think you know perfectly well that the past creates us too.

  See Rock City

  As soon as she gets home Jennifer goes out on her back deck. She tells herself not to go out there but does it anyway. After the fog and a run of cloudy days, the sun is out, the light is bright, the leaves are green, the pond is a shimmering blue reflection. Margaret is not outside. Though what drove Jennifer out was a sense that Margaret would be watching, waiting for her, she fails to be relieved by the sight of the empty deck across the pond.

  Kay died. Kay died of an overdose of pain medication. Is this story even true?

  She can’t listen to Margaret anymore. She can’t. She tightens her grip on the deck railing, firming this decision, and at that moment Margaret comes outside. Jennifer sees the old woman register her presence, but she doesn’t wave, and neither does Jennifer. They both stand there, Jennifer leaning on her railing, Margaret leaning on her cane.

  Jennifer turns away from Margaret and goes inside with a resolution forming. She will not wait around for Megan to resume their friendship. She can still tell her story any way she wants.

  Megan answers the phone. Jennifer’s heart was in her throat, thinking she wouldn’t. “Are you grading papers today?” Jennifer asks.

  “No, I’m all caught up. I usually run errands on Friday.”

  “Are they important? The errands?”

  “Not terribly,” Megan says. “I just wanted to get out of the house.”

  “Oh, good,” Jennifer says. “Because I have an idea.”

  Megan is reluctant. But she doesn’t outright say no. Jennifer knows Megan has never been to Rock City, despite having lived in Sewanee for four years, and that she’s curious. “But the boys are already at school,” Megan says.

  “We’ll go get them. They’ll be thrilled.” Jennifer’s behaving uncharacteristically, pushing in the face of resistance, and it’s making her nervous, but she’s determined. “Don’t you feel like an adventure? Let’s get off this mountain.”

  “We’ll just be going up another one.”

  “At least it’ll be a different mountain.”

  “All
right,” Megan says. Not because she wants to, Jennifer thinks. Because she hates to deny anyone anything, poor Megan. It hurts her to have to say no. Jennifer has taken advantage of this, but not with nefarious intent. With positive intent, Megan! In hopes they will have fun.

  In the car Megan is turned around in her seat, talking to the boys. Keeping an eye on Milo? Watching for signs of imminent psychotic break? Jennifer doesn’t know. She tries not to care. Megan’s working hard at entertaining them. Do they know where they’re going? Do they know everything they’re going to see there? Gnomes! Real ones? the boys ask, and Megan says, with a parent’s carefully obvious show of pretense, “Maybe.” No, no, the boys say, giggling, they won’t be real. What else are they going to see? Rocks! Big ones. A cave. Waterfalls! How much farther is it, the boys want to know, five minutes after they get on the highway and every five minutes thereafter. Why don’t you count the signs? Megan suggests. Some are billboards. Some are painted on barns. Once you get to fifty, I’ll bet we’ll be there.

  “Fifty?” Jennifer asks, and Megan says quietly, “Good round number. Can’t be more than fifty, right?” Then she shouts, “There’s one!” pointing out the window. SEE ROCK CITY in white letters on a barn. Jennifer knows about Rock City only because of these signs. On the long first drive to Sewanee the signs counted down her progress for hundreds of miles. An exhortation. A command. For miles and miles and miles she wondered what the hell Rock City was. “Okay, boys, you know those letters?” Megan says. “You’re looking for S-E-E. Okay? Let’s see who can spot the next one.”

  “I will!” Ben cries, and Milo says, “Me too! Me too!”

  The road looks as if it intends to dump them straight into Nickajack Lake, sparkling in invitation, and then at the bottom of the incline it’s all sunlight and mountains and water. In the middle of the shining lake small islands of darkly clustered trees. Trying to look without crashing the car, Jennifer fancies she sees Margaret staring out from one of those islands, a white face between the trees.

  Rock City is on a twisty road, the kind that curves ahead of you so that you can see the open air beyond it and remember every second you’re right on the edge of the mountain. Jennifer drives slow. At the ticket booth they purchase admittance to Rock City and its neighbor Ruby Falls, and Jennifer doesn’t flinch at the cost. This whole day, nothing will make her flinch. DISCOVER JOY, the billboard just outside the turnoff said, and she’s in a mood to take that seriously. Discover joy. As though no one who comes here has ever felt it before.

  Megan continues bright and cheery with the boys, pointing after fairies she claims to have seen darting behind the enormous rocks or fluttering over the arched stone bridges. The boys begin to say they’ve seen them, too. To Jennifer she says nothing. When they make eye contact she offers a quick smile and looks away. Really, it’s impossible not to think she blames Jennifer for what Milo did. If a small child does something bad, surely it’s the parent’s fault. What are children if not evidence of our own worst qualities? They witness them, they replicate them, they remind you again and again of everything that’s wrong with you.

  Don’t flinch, Jennifer. Maybe she just didn’t want to come today, and suspects you of knowing that, and making her come anyway. But you’ll fix that by the end of the day. By the end of the day everything will be fine, and life can go on here, like you want it to.

  Gnome Valley, Goblin’s Underpass, Lover’s Leap. Rocks shaped like mushrooms, like tortoiseshells. Gaps in the rock, long tumbles down to streams below. It’s beautiful. They bounce along a suspension bridge, dizzyingly high, Megan saying, “Oh be careful, oh be careful,” over and over. They photograph the boys at the sign marking the view of seven states. The boys point this way and that, claiming to be certain that smudgy mountain is North Carolina, that one Virginia. They’re being so lovely together, and Jennifer keeps sneaking looks at Megan, wanting confirmation that she sees it, too.

  They pause at the top of the stairs leading down to a tiny gap between two enormous rocks known as Fat Man’s Squeeze. “Okay, boys,” Jennifer says, ushering each of them closer to the railing. “These stairs are slick. Hold on tight.”

  Megan leans close behind Jennifer and whispers, “It’s all very vaginal.”

  Jennifer laughs, a surprised loud laugh that makes Milo say, “What’s so funny?”

  “Nothing,” Jennifer says. “Watch your step.”

  “Don’t tell me you weren’t thinking that,” Megan says as they descend.

  “Well, now I am,” Jennifer says. She’s smiling straight ahead, smiling big at the gap in the rocks. As they edge through the gap—indeed a tight squeeze—Megan says behind her, “Now we’re in the birth canal.”

  They emerge onto an outcropping of rock, ringed by a stone wall, with viewing machines awaiting their quarters. Blue blue sky. Jennifer says, “Now we’re born,” but Megan doesn’t answer, hustling the boys past the machines back onto the path and then to a wooden platform for waterfall viewing, built jutting out from the side of the rock.

  “Hurray,” Megan says under her breath to Jennifer. “Another precipice.”

  “Don’t worry,” Jennifer says. “There’s a railing. They’ll be okay as long as they don’t climb.”

  “But will I?”

  “Are you afraid of heights?”

  Megan winces, holds her thumb and forefinger a tiny amount apart.

  “You live on a mountain.”

  Megan shrugs. “It’s not really heights I’m afraid of. It’s edges.” She peers over. “They make me want to jump.” She looks at Jennifer and bounces her eyebrows up and down, and Jennifer laughs.

  Ruby Falls involves a long elevator ride down to a cave, and then a guided meander to an underground waterfall. After the elevator each group must pose for a photo, and Megan and Jennifer stand side by side, hands on the shoulders of the boys in front of them. “Say squeeze!” the photographer says.

  Their guide, and the guides they pass, all make jokes: “How are you?” their guide says, and the other guide says, “I’d be fine if these people would stop following me.” So many jokes that Jennifer wonders aloud to Megan if it’s someone’s job to write them.

  “I don’t know,” Megan says. She seems stiff and distracted again, so Jennifer keeps her next thought to herself: how the haunting beauty of the cave inspires awe on its own, and then they try to ramp up the awe with red glowing lights and fantasy-epic music playing from hidden speakers, then undercut that effort with jokes. As if you need a break from awe. As if there is a danger in too much of it.

  The guide stops them before the waterfall chamber. “You are now one thousand one hundred twenty-five feet below the surface of the earth,” he says, and beside her Megan gasps. The guide utters words of caution, then presses a button that starts more fantasy music and makes the lights go out. They enter the chamber, the air filled with the sound of rushing water. The boys make ghost sounds and giggle and behind them, to Jennifer’s annoyance, people snap pictures, ruining the ambiance with sharp bursts of light. A hand touches Jennifer’s, and she startles, because it’s not a little hand, not Milo’s hand, because he’s standing right in front of her and she’s holding on to his shoulder. Megan’s voice is in her ear: “This might be a good time to tell you I’m claustrophobic.” Jennifer laughs, thinking this is more comedy, but then Megan takes firm hold of Jennifer’s hand and squeezes it, much too hard for joking.

  The big reveal: the music swells, the lights come up, and there it is, the waterfall. “Awesome,” Ben says, and Milo repeats. Megan holds tight to Jennifer’s hand.

  “It’s not usually this bad,” Megan says to her, under the sound of water. “But we’re a thousand feet down, and I’d rather not have a panic attack in front of Ben. Or you and Milo. I’m okay right here because this is a big space, but the way back . . .”

  “What if you held on to me and closed your eyes? Would that help?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know.”

  “Let’s try it,” Jennif
er says. “You can pretend you’re walking through a field.”

  “All right.” Megan sighs. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be,” Jennifer says. “It’ll be okay.”

  They walk out that way, the boys in front of Jennifer and Megan clinging to her hand behind. Past the delicate, spectacular formations and the signs that point out what they resemble: bacon, steak and potatoes, an angel’s wing. “Weird, ain’t it,” says a man in front of Jennifer. She wishes she could come down here alone, pause and gaze up, stare a long, long time. But they have to keep moving. Past the Dragon’s Foot, past the Mirror Pool. Behind her Megan lets out the long slow breaths of someone wrestling with panic. “This is our last stop before the elevator,” the guide says at last, and as he goes on talking Jennifer feels a sudden sharp pang, a longing to dash back inside, to hear again that rushing water in the dark, to gaze into the Mirror Pool. But she can’t do that, because Milo and Ben are in front of her, and Megan holds on to her hand.

  From the elevator they’re led up steps to a tower, from which there is a strangely unpretty, if expansive, view. At the first opportunity Megan hugs her. “Thank you,” she says. And then for good measure Megan hugs both the boys. “Thank you,” she says to each of them, and they look at each other with puzzled smiles and ask for what, and she says for being so good.

  After the tower is the gift shop, where a long-haired boy behind a counter pulls out a bright red Ruby Falls folder holding the photo taken at the beginning of the tour. There they are, Megan, Jennifer, Milo, Ben—an eight-by-ten on the right side of the folder, a sheet of wallets on the left. “Twenty dollars for the big one,” the boy says. “Thirty for all of it, plus you get this!” He holds up a small cheap frame that says RUBY FALLS.

  Megan leans over the photos without touching them. “Cute,” she says. “Let us think about it.” She walks away, telling the kids to come on, and the boy shrugs, knowing that means no. He moves to put the folder on a stack of other abandoned ones.